 Welcome artistic friends and visitors to Monet Cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and today's lesson is going to be on how to do quick studies. Often we learn and grow a lot more as artists when we limit ourselves to a certain short time period. Now I did this little painting, I joked around and called it 15 minutes before I have to put the chicken on the grill because I literally just had a little bit of time but seriously I ended up calling it a place in the sun. So join me as I give instruction on this painting and share the advantages of painting with a time limit. Now the full real-time video will be on my Patreon page and if you'd like to become a patron of mine it's only $5 a month, they get a little something extra and there will be a clickable link at the end of this video. But don't worry Monet Cafe subscribers and visitors, there will be plenty of content in this video to learn from as well. All right let's get started with this painting. Once again I knew I had a limited amount of time. I already had a piece of UART paper up on my easel and I have been eyeing this little photo that I was an old family photo and I don't know how I ran across it but I just loved it and I stuck it on my easel to remember it and I thought well this is a perfect time to paint it because I don't have much time let's do it. Now what I did is I just had some pastels. I'm not going to bother showing the my palette of pastels. This is real time by the way. I had my palette of pastels some of them already there from a previous painting and so again I just had limited time. So if you have limited time sometimes you know it's not so bad just to work with what you've got sitting there. But one thing you need to keep in mind or a few things but one of the things you need to keep in mind is don't take it so seriously when you do these quick studies. Remember it's a study it's to learn from and the great thing is if you are using this UART sanded paper it's spelled U the letter U and art. Those are some of the best papers for pastel painting are sanded papers and I know your UART paper can be a little bit more pricey than just regular paper. So I'm using a blending tool here this is just a piece of pipe foam insulation and you see how it's giving it that soft effect. I'm really just getting some deep roots I'll get back to the UART paper. I'm really just getting some deep roots down at the bottom for those flowers to grow into they need ground and usually your darker values are down where the ground is and have a little bit of that lavender up in the sky. So this is what I call an underpainting it made a nice underpainting but what I was saying about the UART is it is washable. So if you're doing a quick study and you're a little nervous about oh my gosh I don't want to have to buy this UART paper all the time I can't afford to just play well you can because it really you brush it off with a brush like a stiff bristle paint brush and then you can actually wash it off and I have little tips on how to flatten it out and all that good stuff. So quick studies is a great great way to grow as an artist and to have fun and not get so hung up on being so serious and it's okay if it's terrible trust me I have had plenty of terrible paintings. Now as you can see from the photo I'm not following it exactly the photo was a landscape horizontal format I already had my paper up here vertically so I'm like I'll just kind of visually in my eyes my mind crop it and do it vertically and what I wanted to capture I love looking at a photo and say what is it that draws me to this photo and in this case it was just that whole blanket of sunflowers daisies whatever that not sunflowers daisies in a field and how they were just kind of you could almost like we are looking down on them and they were reaching up towards the viewer and had all these deep roots and they kind of faded off prospectively into the distance now what I'm doing now is I know that things in the distance they get lighter in value so you're not gonna have as many darks in the distance and they get cooler in color temperature so you're gonna have more cool greens rather than warm greens if you don't know what it means about cool versus warm I've got plenty of videos I'm actually trying to reorganize my playlists right now on my YouTube channel I already have some playlists so if you went to my channel there's up at the top you can see videos and you see playlist and those are literally just folders that I have created with certain subject matter right now I've got over 170 videos on my YouTube channel so it's kind of hard to go back and find one so I'm trying to put them in I think I already have them like color theory and under painting lessons and pastel products things like that so that might be an easier way for you guys to find things but there are some videos that I have two or three on color temperature and that would probably be under the color theory playlist so I'm just kind of playing around with the color again I only had in my mind I had 15 minutes because I had started my grill and I know I didn't want to burn my house down so I knew I couldn't work for very long but I ended up I mean if you if you're on my patreon page you're gonna see the full real-time version of this and you'll see it actually ended up being more like oh by the time I edit out the content other than me painting it was about a 25 minute painting time period so so unfortunately the chicken came out fine I didn't have the chicken on the grill at this point I was warming up my grill so anyway so it did work out okay and it's it's a good idea to to set a physical timer because you know if you've been painting a while you know painting can get away from you it's wonderful therapy but you forget sometimes how long you've been painting so if you could set a little timer to go off I would recommend trying 15 minute studies you can bump it up to 20 like I said this one was 25 so you know between 15 and 30 minutes would be a good time probably not 30 I think trying to limit yourself there's something about like 15 and 20 minutes that makes you realize okay this is about having fun now these get better the more you paint of course when you're first starting we're not as confident about some of just the principles of painting and and perspective and value and color and all of that so it might feel a little haphazard but it is a great way to loosen up and start to feel the freedom of being an artist so there are definitely times when we need to slow down and purposely practice with intention and and really thinking about it but then there's sometimes when we can just loosen up and have fun and I find the studies are better when you have been painting a little while and you may have the goal I get it all the time questions about how do I loosen up and how do I get that painterly feel we'll do some quick studies it's also great to do I do this so often paint from the same reference photo take a reference photo you like paint it do a quick study do another quick study try different color palette try different mood you know and vary things up a bit try different textures of papers and and just have fun so all right so this is the point where I'm gonna speed it up for Monet cafe and again I learned so much as an artist just watching other people paint so don't feel like you have to become a patron because you can still learn from here and I again I have loved being able to provide free art lessons to the world literally on Monet cafe and I never want to change that so I am thankful that I do have people who want to support me this all started me becoming or having a patreon page was because of suggestions from people like you guys watching the videos like we want to support you and so it was great but I it it's hard for me to receive like that just without giving something extra so I do give extra to my patrons and we have a lot of fun it's a great group so anyway that information will be at the end of the video with a little clickable link but in the meantime if you're watching on Monet cafe I'm gonna speed it up with some music enjoy I hope you will practice some paintings with a time limit and this is the point to where my patrons will continue to watch in real time all right guys so have a good time with this get out and paint some and stay tuned to the end of the video alright guys here's some music my artist friends that was a lot of fun I enjoyed this and again I did not burn my chicken or I didn't set my house on fire by leaving the grill while I painted fortunately and the chicken was delicious so give yourself some limited time maybe go ahead and cut up about you know a few smaller sizes like five by sevens and I called this a place in the Sun and have some fun with these and subscribe to this channel if you haven't already of course I'd love for you to become a patron and as always happy painting